Dozens of girls have been hospitalized this Saturday after being poisoned with gas in at least four schools in Iran, amid a wave of poisonings in women’s educational centers in the country. In total, almost a hundred minors have been poisoned on the same day in half a dozen different schools.
As reported by the EFE agency, Iranian authorities and official media have confirmed poisonings this Saturday in six schools in the country, but groups of activists raise the number of female educational centers affected today to more than a dozen.
At least 27 students from a school in the city of Kavar, in the south of the country, were hospitalized after suffering nausea and dizziness, the spokesman for the provincial Department of Education, Hamidreza Shabani, told the Tasnim agency, who has assured that the young women find “good”. In the northwest of the country, another 30 students from a school in Urmia were admitted to medical centers with symptoms of poisoning, according to the Tasnim agency, which did not mention official sources.
Also to the north, 29 youngsters from a Zanjan school were taken to a hospital and are in good condition, according to the president of the city’s University of Medical Sciences, according to the Shargh daily. Two other schools in the cities of Hamedan and Kabudarahang, in the east of the country, also suffered poisonings that caused the hospitalization of an unknown number of young people, the spokesman for the Hamedan University of Medical Sciences, Alireza Toghiri, told the ISNA agency. .
This is the latest incident in which minors are intoxicated in schools. On February 28, hundreds of schoolchildren suffered the same type of poisoning that has been occurring in numerous schools in up to 15 cities across the country.
The minors affected have denounced having perceived a strong odor in the schools before feeling a headache, palpitations, nausea and dizziness. In the first instances of these poisonings, some 50 young women were poisoned in the same city, while in another the number rose to 80 minors. Last Wednesday, a member of the Iranian parliament assured the local media Mehr News that the affected minors amounted to 900.
Iran has been immersed in a wave of protests and tension since last September, when the young Masha Amini died at the hands of the Morale Police. Her agents had arrested him for misplaced her veil. In response, thousands of people have protested in the streets of the main cities of the country against the repression. The demonstrations began to demand the rights of women and have evolved into a movement against the regime.
The authorities have admitted in recent days that they are investigating these poisonings, which they describe as “intentional attacks”. Iran assures that it has created a specialized team in the Ministry of Health, but has not yet provided details on the progress of its investigations.
Local activists have described the incidents in schools as “toxic attacks” and “bioterrorism” and assure that they constitute another step by the Iranian regime in the repression against the protests that have affected the country since last September. “They want to recover the lost ground before the ‘Woman. Life. Libertad’ instilling panic among the girls and their families,” said a statement from the Iranian Teachers’ Association published on its Telegram channel.
The country’s Undersecretary of Education, Younes Panahi, said last week that “after the poisoning of several students in the city of Qom, we have seen that some people want schools to close, especially those for girls,” although he later retracted . Another member of parliament acknowledged that the poisonings “had been done intentionally”.
